Re: Emacs on QNX

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Elad Lahav wrote:

>> In what sense doesn't it work? Can we work around this problem
>> automatically?
> 
> pkg-config doesn't exist. 

Oh, by "don't work" you meant that you wanted Emacs linked to libxml2 even 
though you lack the pkg-config setup that ordinarily comes with libxml2 
development environments. That is, Emacs still builds and runs, it's just that 
it doesn't automatically have an optional feature that you'd like to have, and 
you have to set two environment variables to get it.

> I find the requirement to use pkg-config
> for detecting libxml limiting, and I certainly don't like having to set
> an unnecessary environment variable to force its inclusion. Is it not
> possible to test for libxml with a simple test program, the way other
> components are detected?

It's of course possible, but I'm not sure it's worth the maintenance hassle for 
us. We used to configure all libraries by hand but found that this was a real 
maintenance burden, and it was easier to rely on pkg-config to solve the problem 
(at least for newer libraries like libxml2). You have a solution that works for 
QNX and, I think it's unlikely that people on other platforms will run into the 
problem. If they do, we can revisit this issue.

Alternatively, you might consider installing pkg-config on QNX. That might 
simplify things for both of us.

http://wiki.ros.org/groovy/Installation/QNX#Install_pkg-config_via_pkgsrc